§ Statement of Purpose

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787. Knowing and preserving those understandings, what might be called the unwritten constitution of our nation, is vital to preserving constitutional government. Without them, the bare words of the Constitution are just a Rorschach ink-blot that politicians, educators, and judges can interpret to mean anything they wish.

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division, Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798.

Friday, January 25, 2008

A Money Manager Views the Fed and the Dollar

Lenin was surely right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.—John Maynard Keynes

Currency debauchment is a choice. Most governments don’t want to debauch their currency—it’s just that they don’t want to take the actions that might prevent it, because those actions are perceived to be intolerably painful. Thus it was that last fall, the Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank, decided to “let the dollar go” because staying the course on interest rates might threaten the world’s financial system (or so the argument goes)...

In a world of fiat currencies, where trust is your most powerful policy tool, dollar strength is a far better indicator as to the appropriate stance of monetary policy than “core” inflation.